


black jasmine

by acomplicatedprofession



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: ? - Freeform, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Mild Language, Mutual Pining, Tattoos, kedalbe kiss, lol, oops wait I forgot, tattooed!din is the hill I will die on thank you and goodnight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acomplicatedprofession/pseuds/acomplicatedprofession
Summary: “I didn’t know you had tattoos,” you whispered, smoothing your palm across his collarbones. Below them lay edges of skin faded black, blooming across his sternum. You’d never seen them before. Never really got close enough to.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/You
Comments: 11
Kudos: 156





	black jasmine

**Author's Note:**

> ok hello some notes
> 
> \- this is a few years after all the Shenanigans alluded to in the heist episode happened, but still solidly pre-baby yoda (so like after his ~funky~ murder/possibly fuckboi past,.. mans has calmed down a bit.. he's tired.. a little older.. a lil jaded... u feel me...)
> 
> \- while researching traditional tattooing I learned about tā moko and drew some of the descriptions of tools/practices from there, so if you’re looking for a visual as to how I imagine Din’s tattoo was done you can see a video here (https://www.teaomaori.news/reviving-traditional-tools-ta-moko)

Your eyes drew down the collar of the Mandalorian’s shirt as you lay beside him, the size of his bunk affording no spare room. His heartbeat was steady underneath your cheek and when you spoke, it was more to yourself than to him. **  
**

“I didn’t know you had tattoos,” you whispered, smoothing your palm across his collarbones. Below them lay edges of skin faded black, blooming across his sternum. You’d never seen them before. Never really got close enough to.

The Mandalorian’s helmet dipped as if jarred, prompting hasty apologies to fall from your lips as you realized he was probably asleep. Light sleeper, then. Figures.

He hushed you when you attempted another apology, drawing you closer with a strong arm running warm underneath dark long sleeves. Dipping your chin, you shivered slightly when the edge of his helmet skid against your temple.

Like turning the tap forward and back on a bath, your limbs tingling with bobbing temperatures that left pinpricks in your blood. Beskar and a breathing man. Cold and hot. Hot and cold. Strangely grounding, in a way. Reminding you that you were alive to feel them.

He could do that, you supposed. People who didn’t know him better, who only saw his visor-silence, might’ve thought it unnerving. To you, it was just Mando. Just how he was, with his own way of things that you didn’t press. Way, more like. With a capital W.

The napping together was new, though.

Apparently it was for warmth, because the Crest’s heater got blown out again while on some backwater ice planet and you couldn’t get the parts til next week

Sharing a bed with your partner was an awkward hazard of the business, but it wasn’t like you’d both die of hypothermia if you didn’t. You knew you’d be fine for those few nights and Mando did too, but he still held out a blanket - the only one of his that wasn’t threadbare or thinner than water - and you still said thank you.

So that was where you were now. Cozied up to a man who’d killed more people than you’d ever met, and filled with unbelievable amounts of sexual tension.

For his part, he seemed pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Maybe he liked watching you squirm. Or he was just tired.

Fingers dug into the flesh of your hip and you scooted closer, smelling sharp bar soap and the headiness of masculine life that flooded your senses like spice.

He mumbled a gravelled sentence and you glanced up to meet his words between the gaps of your eyelashes. “What was that?”

His head tipped back, and if you could see them, you imagined his eyes were closing again. A small sigh, borne out of sleep rather than exasperation, and then a repetition of the words you’d not heard. “Only one,” the Mandalorian answered as you wrinkled your brow. “Only one tattoo.”

Your lips parted and you let out a soft _oh_.

Then, silence.

Not the biting kind, not tense or weird or anything. It was just… quiet. Soft. Two people lying in a cramped bed, one on the cusp of consciousness and the other still painfully curious. About tattoos and about other things.

You hadn’t had the _so, what are we?_ talk.

You probably should.

It could probably wait.

Probably.

Your fingers traced along his shirt’s edge and hooked around the hem, pulling gently to reveal another inch of ink.

It seemed old-fashioned, the thick stick and poke kind done by people without the credits for a thing quicker or the cowardliness for a thing less painful.

You wondered if it hurt and what the whole thing looked like.

You wondered why he got it.

You wondered if he thought it was beautiful.

The thoughts in your head lingered long enough on the tip of your tongue for him to feel them and call your name.

“Yeah?”

“You can look.”

“Oh- I didn’t… I mean it’s—” you tripped over your words with heat splotching your neck, jolted at being caught. “It’s fine, really you don’t have to—”

He called your name again and you winced, tucking your chin. This only turned your face further into his neck though, so it didn’t really help as much as it furthered your rising embarrassment. “Yeah?”

The Mandalorian’s hand reached down over yours, his palm resting heavy and silk-soft around your wrist as he pushed your fingers up underneath his shirt. They caught around the pale, raised scars that mottled his sides but he didn’t pause. He didn’t say anything until the fabric gathered around his chest.

“You can look,” he assured you again.

You swallowed and sat up beside him, watching the downward tilt of his visor when your hand skid across his stomach. It was an accident, really, but he made no move to go. He brought the other one back, actually, up towards his collarbones to trace down over what you now saw was a mythosaur. Like his necklace.

It was rough-hewn and dark across his chest center; not yet complete. The edges were finished but the inside was a criss cross of long hatches, piling on top of one another in thin lines that shaded just over half. You traced over a healed blaster wound on his stomach.

“Did it… hurt?” you breathed out.

The Mandalorian leant up on his elbows and you scooted down to make room. He cocked his head. “The blaster?”

“No,” you said, “No, the tattoo.”

Truth be told, you weren’t a big fan of either. You didn’t make a habit of encountering pain, least of all seeking out on purpose. You guessed that was the trade-off, though. For safety or for a sense of self.

Fingertips tracing a line down the seam of his chest, you felt the miniscule raisings tapped down beneath the dermis.

“I got it when I was younger,” the Mandalorian told you, not really answering your question. Instead, he offered you something different.

His past was a delicate thing, to him and to you. He held it out for your taking.

“The Armourer,” he went on, “she was trained for it. It’s the only art we could be trained for. And I,” he remembered with a dry chuckle, “I begged her for it.”

You bit your lip to bite down a smile, sucking in an inhale when his hand led yours to close around the mythosaur pendant at his neck. It was cold in your palms and he squeezed your hand shut, rubbing a wide thumb over your knuckles as he spoke. “She gave in eventually, but just with this,” and he pointed to the outside edge, its ink cleaner and sharper than rest.

“Wait,” you interjected, furrowing your brows. “So does that mean...”

The bounty hunter nodded. “Did the rest myself. Or with whoever was around. One line,” he said, his voice echoing a small seed of bitterness, “For every good hunt.”

You lay back beside him on the bunk again, dumbfounded. There must’ve been dozens, _hundreds_ of lines. And it wasn’t even finished.

The pendant suddenly felt heavier when you let it fall from your touch.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” he said matter-of-factly, cutting you off when you tried to protest. “It was. But I did a lot of stupid things back then.”

He was really good at being vague and cryptic and kind of annoying sometimes.

“Back when?” you asked, looking up and seeing your earnest reflection in the shadow of his visor stare. Waiting. Wondering.

The Mandalorian’s reply was succinct and not at all fitting the weight of what it was implying. Like he didn’t need to even think of the answer. “Before I had you.”

You didn’t have the words to answer him and even if you did, you didn’t think you could.

All you could do was try not to gulp down the stale ship air like you were drowning, clawing for life while lying beside him, and hope that he knew you felt the same.

Before he had you.

Before you had him.

Before you both had whatever _this_ was.

Wherever it would take you and however it would end up; he had you and you had him and it was held in your palms like metal and in the touch of your fingertips like skin drawn black. And it was beautiful.

He said your name again and it almost sounded painful, the way the modulator warped the dark vowels until they stood suspended in the air between you, waiting for you to make your move.

Apparently, it was his turn to ask a question.

“Do you know my name?” he asked.

He was warm next to you, shed of every piece of armor save the one thing that you both knew he couldn’t leave below bunk. Somehow through all of this your legs had slipped together, tangling in a mess of bone and body. His face would be close to touching (if you could) and his palm travelled up again to the slope of your waist.

“No,” you answered, your admittance holding nothing sour. “Do you want me to?”

You leaned closer and he did, too. Until your forehead met hard beskar and you heard a quiet sigh echo in both voices.

“Din,” he told you, his words ragged with sleep breathing and slight hesitation. He spoke again, steadier this time. “My name is Din.”

A beat passed. “It’s a good name,” you said softly, letting your eyes close. “You’re a good man.”

You remembered snippets, things he had told you about his Creed and the Way and what-have-yous that you’d picked up along the time you were around to hear it. You remembered something called a _kov’nyn_.

If you didn’t ask now, you never would.

You would fall asleep beside a bounty hunter now named Din with his hand on your side and his soul worming his way into your heart and you would never, ever know.

So, you asked.

“Does this count as a kiss?”

A low laugh with a jilted movement, and he moved towards you closer still. “Do you want it to?”

“Yes,” you whispered, your breath fogging up. You didn’t dare open your eyes and break the pause; let go, pry yourself away.

The Mandalorian— _Din_ — almost crushed you to him, his touch in your hair and on your flank until you seemed molded in carbonite, grown against him and his scars and his one tattoo.

He spoke to you again and the words _floated_. “Then it does.”


End file.
